Lessons from the past

As noted above, there are different but converging ways of
disaggregating sovereignty such as functional regimes; common markets; political
communities; and one could indeed establish certain analogies between the regime
of the European Coal and Steel Community, or the Schuman Plan, and the ocean
regime, and lessons to be learned therefrom.

Coal and steel were important for economic development. They were
also strategic resources. The genius of Jean Monnet was in the perception that
the establishment of an international regime for the control and management of
these resources would serve two purposes: to enhance economic recovery and
development in war-torn Europe; and to promote European security by eliminating
the German war-making potential. If these strategic industries were
internationalized, they could not be used for war-making.

In the context of the new phase of the industrial revolution, the
mineral resources of the deep sea-bed could be seen as the equivalent of coal
and steel during the preceding phase. They, too, had an economic development as
well as a strategic importance. Arvid Pardo foresaw that the
internationalization of these resources, and of the high technologies to be
developed for their production, would enhance both economic development and
maritime security, preventing an arms race and the carving-up of the deep
sea-bed.

The lesson to be learned from the coal and steel experience is
that it turned out to be impossible to detach one sector of the economic system
from the rest of it, or detach economics from politics. The coal and steel
regime was a trigger mechanism that initiated the unification of Europe. The
sea-bed mining regime may be destined to play a similar role in the world at
large.

We raised this issue of the Coal and Steel Community and its
common features with the nascent International Sea-bed Authority as early as
1970, at Pacem in Maribus I.15 Scheingold ascribed the success of the
Coal and Steel Community, at that time, to two factors: first, the then-ruling
Christian Democratic leaders, though committed to a market economy, decided to
pool these industries rather than leave them to the vagaries of free trade.
"Free trade arrangements were too ephemeral: what was needed was the kind
of industrial interpenetration which would inextricably link these basic
industries of the member states." Secondly, those leaders were united in
the belief that an organization was needed that would be headed by an agency
with the authority to make decisions binding not only on states but on juridical
persons as well.

The International Seabed Authority, based on the principle of the
Common Heritage of Mankind, would have satisfied both these conditions.

Although the market-oriented Implementation Agreement of July 1994
made the Authority inoperable, it is hoped temporarily, the principle of the
Common Heritage of Mankind is here to stay. With its four dimensions - economic
development; conservation of environment and resources; equity; peace and
security - it constitutes a basis for sustainable development that simply cannot
be implemented on any other basis. It builds a bridge to the non-Western
cultures - a bridge that is needed at a time when Western hegemony must come to
an end. And it is a principle of non-sovereignty as it is a principle of
non-ownership, suited to the scientific, technological and environmental needs
and recognitions of the post-industrial society and to the positive aspects of
"globalization." It is the nature of the ocean, so different from
that of the land, that forced humankind to embark on a course of innovation,
just as the havoc left by World War II forced Europe to innovate - in a
different but somewhat analogous
way.